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France’s political chaos casts long shadow over economic growth

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A pedestrian crosses a flooded street following heavy rainfall in Paris on October 17, 2024.

Joel Saget | Afp | Getty Images

French lawmakers will hold a no-confidence vote in the fragile minority government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier on Wednesday, as economists warn the political stalemate likely to ensue will come at a high economic cost.

Two so-called “motions of censure” filed by both the left-wing and far-right opposition parties will be debated and voted on from 4 p.m. local time. The administration is widely seen as likely to be ousted, just three months after it was formed. If the government collapses, Barnier — who failed to find compromise within the heavily-divided National Assembly to pass a 2025 budget bill aimed at reducing the hefty French deficit — will then be forced to tender his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron.

From there, uncertainty reigns. Macron will eventually need to name a new prime minister, after already struggling to make such an appointment in the wake of the snap summer election which delivered the most votes to the left-wing coalition, but did not give any party a majority. Long-time minister Barnier had been seen as a technocratic compromise.

“Once Barnier resigns, Macron will likely ask him to continue as a caretaker. The alternative option of formally renominating Barnier looks unlikely given the manifest lack of a majority,” Carsten Nickel, deputy director of research at Teneo, said in a Tuesday note.

This caretaker status could drag on for months, since fresh elections cannot be held until next year, while another possibility is Macron’s resignation triggering presidential elections within 35 days, Nickel said.

French Minister for the Economy, Finance and Industry Antoine Armand arrives at the Elysee presidential palace to attend the weekly cabinet meeting, during which France's 2025 budget was presented, on October 10, 2024 in Paris. 

French budget surprises with focus on tax hikes as analysts warn of ratings downgrades

He added that such a series of events would leave the budget bill unpassed, with a last-minute deal appearing improbable.

The caretaker government is therefore likely to present a special constitutional law which would “effectively roll over the 2024 accounts without any of the previously envisaged spending cuts or tax hikes, while empowering the government to keep collecting taxes,” he said.

Amid the turmoil, French borrowing costs are climbing while the euro has been caught up in negative sentiment — exacerbated by bleak manufacturing data from the euro area and concurrent political volatility in Germany.

“France is facing a prospect of a growing fiscal deficit that will become more expensive to finance as their [government bond] yields rise amid this uncertainty,” analysts at Maybank said in a note Wednesday.

Deficit challenge

To international investors, the situation in France looks “very bad,” Javier Díaz-Giménez, professor of Economics at Spain’s IESE Business School, told CNBC by phone.

“Without a budget, they really would default, not because they can’t pay interest on their debt, but because they won’t without a budget. Ratings agencies are already putting in warnings, 10-year French bonds have a higher premium than Greece’s, which is crazy in terms of fundamentals,” he said. Greece had briefly lost its investment grade credit rating status amid the euro area debt crisis, which led to the nation’s sovereign default.

“But that’s because pension funds don’t care, they just want an assured steam of revenue with no concerns about legal shenanigans. So they will dump [French bonds] and go elsewhere,” Díaz-Giménez said.

“Beyond economic growth and stability, this will send debt in a non-sustainable direction in France.”

Economists had already trimmed their growth forecasts for France following the publication of the budget proposal in October, given its sweeping tax hikes and public spending cuts.

Analysts at Dutch bank ING, who previously forecast French growth slowing from 1.1% in 2024 to 0.6% in 2025, said Tuesday that the fall of Barnier’s government “would be bad news for the French economy.”

They also predicted the passing of a provisional budget mirroring the 2024 framework.

“Such a budget will not rectify the trajectory of public spending,” they said, throwing out Barnier’s target of reducing the public deficit from 6% of GDP to 5% in 2025 — which would mean France would not move toward meeting the European Union’s new fiscal rules.

“At a time when economic growth in France is slowing markedly, this is bad news. The public deficit will remain high, debt will continue to grow and the next government – whenever that may be – will have an even tougher task to put public finances right,” the ING analysts said.

Gilles Moëc, group chief economist at AXA, observed in a note Monday that “France can count on large reserves of domestic savings to replace international investors, and the euro area dataflow helps to decouple European from US yields, but in the medium run, directing too much of domestic savings to funding the government can become costly in terms of growth dynamics.”

“Consumer confidence has already declined, and the savings rate could rise further, thwarting the rebound in consumption on which the government is counting to support tax receipts in 2025,” Moëc said.

German comparison

While both countries are mired in their political turbulence, the spread between France’s borrowing costs over those of Germany stretched to a fresh 12-year high this month.

However, Díaz-Giménez of IESE Business School said that in some ways, the French outlook was more positive than that of the euro area’s largest economy.

“In France, economic prospects are pretty bleak, but it’s not going to be a disaster if ancillary risks can be avoided. The high fiscal deficit is hard to fix and requires political harmony but they could still find a way through, it just puts pressure on politicians to do their jobs and solve the real problems, in this case fiscal sustainability,” he told CNBC.

“But in Germany the problem is growth. The German economy needs major adaptation to a new environment without Russian gas and in which making cars in Europe looks like a really bad business plan. From an economic point of view, that is harder to solve than the French problem.”

This photograph shows part of the Eiffel Tower with the Sacre-Coeur Basilica in the background, in Paris, on November 27, 2024. 

Barclays prefers Germany over France as it sends ‘bond vigilante’ warning

Economics

Marco Rubio, MAGA and the State Department’s new look

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SOMETHING STRANGE happened on April 22nd. A top member of America’s cabinet announced big changes to his department—and it did not represent a MAGA-inspired overhaul. At a time when Donald Trump’s worst instincts are dominating public policy, it is notable that Marco Rubio’s reforms at the State Department resemble what might have come out of a conventional Republican administration.

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Economics

If Trump wants rate cuts, he would likely need to replace the Fed’s full board

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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 21, 2025.

Leah Millis | Reuters

President Donald Trump’s public criticism of Fed Chair Jerome Powell has fueled concern that he will try to fire the central bank chief, but even that historic and legally questionable move may not be enough for Trump to bend monetary policy in his preferred direction.

Even firing Powell won’t necessarily get Trump the rate cuts he wants, according to multiple economists.

“In all likelihood, however, firing Powell would just be the first step in dismantling the Fed’s independence. If Trump is set on lowering interest rates then he will have to fire the other six Fed Board Members too, which would trigger a more severe market backlash, with the dollar falling and rates at the long end of the yield curve rising,” said Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist at Capital Economics, in a recent note.

Powell is chair of both the Fed board of governors and the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets interest rate policy. Ashworth pointed out that, while FOMC members usually choose to make the president-appointed board of governors chair to lead them, they can buck Trump and choose someone else as head of the rate-setting committee. And JPMorgan’s chief U.S. economist, Michael Feroli, said in a note Monday that “most of the power of the leadership stems from the historical deference” rather than the actual mechanics of the job.

Deutsche Bank senior economist Peter Sidorov echoed the idea that individual Fed members might vote against the wishes of a new leader if they feel Trump has overstepped.

“Note that while the Fed Chair has significant influence over the FOMC, monetary policy actions are taken by a majority vote so removing Powell could lead to increased pushback from other members against pressure on the Fed to deliver easier policy,” Sidorov said in a note to clients Tuesday.

This discussion on Wall Street comes after Trump has criticized Powell multiple times in recent days, including calling the Fed chair “a major loser” in a social media post Monday that rocked financial markets. White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett said last week that the president and his team were exploring the possibility of removing the Fed chair.

It is unclear whether Trump even has the authority to remove Powell before his term as board of governors chair ends next year. Powell has previously said he does not believe it is legally allowed for the president to fire him. The Supreme Court is set to hear an appeal about Trump’s firing of board members at other federal organizations in a case that could shed light on what’s next for the Fed.

The speculation about changes at the Fed, along with the ongoing tariff uncertainty, appears to have hurt investor confidence in the United States. U.S. stocks, bonds and the dollar have all fallen in recent weeks.

Wall Street pros worry that changes at the Fed could lead to further sell-offs and fears of higher inflation.

“Any reduction in the independence of the Fed would add upside risks to an inflation outlook that is already subject to upward pressures from tariffs and somewhat elevated inflation expectations,” Feroli said in a note to clients.

“It has been hoped that these adverse consequences would dissuade the president from threatening Fed independence, though so far the president has often followed through on his intentions,” he added.

— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed reporting.

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Economics

ECB’s Lagarde says she hopes firing of Fed’s Powell is not on table

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Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), comments on the central bank’s latest interest rate decision to journalists.

Photo by Andreas Arnold/picture alliance via Getty Images

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde on Tuesday said she hoped that the prospect of U.S. President Donald Trump firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was not on the table.

Asked by CNBC’s Sara Eisen if that scenario was a current material risk to markets, Lagarde said: “I certainly hope not … I hope that it is not a risk.”

Speaking on the sidelines of the IMF World Bank Spring Meetings, Lagarde told CNBC that she would not comment on the market implications of an event she hoped was “not on the table.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has been ramping up pressure on Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to reduce interest rates, warning the U.S. economy could slow down otherwise.

Powell had in turn last week suggested that Trump’s trade war could weigh on growth and fuel inflation. He did not indicate his expectations for the interest rate path ahead, but noted that “for the time being, we are well positioned to wait for greater clarity before considering any adjustments to our policy stance.”

Trump appointed Powell during his first presidential mandate, but is now looking into whether the Fed chief can legally be sacked before him term expires.

The ECB and the Fed have been diverging on monetary policy.

The euro area’s central bank has consistently cut rates as inflation closes in on its 2% target and economic growth in the bloc appears lackluster. The Fed has meanwhile been keeping rates steady this year, after enacting three consecutive cuts between September and December last year.

The ECB last week cut interest rates by a further 25 basis points, making its third reduction of 2025 and its seventh trim since it began easing monetary policy last summer. In its monetary policy statement, the central bank warned of a weakened growth outlook linked to the global trade uncertainty stoked by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policy.

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